The iPhone is now officially a camera. I mean, it has been a
camera for a long time. The most popular camera in the world, as
Apple is quick to point out each and every year, a decade on. But
now it’s really a camera, as today’s keynote made clear. The key
parts of the presentations for both the iPhone 11 and the iPhone
11 Pro were all about the camera. As Phil Schiller said in his
portion: “I know what you’re waiting for, and I am too. Let’s talk
about the cameras. Without question, my favorite part about
iPhone.”

It feels like if Apple wasn’t so wedded to their own legacy
branding — more on that in a bit — they would rename this thing
the iCamera.

Just look at the back of these phones to see how central the camera systems are.

That was my main takeaway from today’s event, with a side of one
more thing: Apple is so far ahead when it comes to their chips in
these devices that they invited out their VP of Silicon to do a
verbal victory lap. Was this aimed at Samsung? Google? Xiaomi?
Qualcomm? Intel? Probably all of the above.

I’ve said it before and will say it again: imagine what the Android commentariat would be saying if the tables were turned, and it was Snapdragon chips that were years ahead of Apple’s A-series chips in every single regard: CPU, GPU, and power efficiency. The first question for anyone who wants to argue that Apple showed no innovation Tuesday is how to explain the A13’s astonishing dominance over every other competing chipset.